Acoustic panels are commonly used on aircraft components to attenuate noise emissions. Such panels commonly comprise a non-perforate back sheet, a honeycomb or other shape core, and a perforated top sheet. The core forms multiple resonating chambers which are open through the perforations in the top sheet.
Acoustic panels typically have many small perforations in the top sheet. Forming these perforations can be a slow and costly process with current methods, and current methods suffer from practical limitations such as a lower limit to the diameter of the smallest practical perforation or hole. Laser drilling may be employed as an advantageous process for forming small diameter perforations for acoustic panels, which are desired to minimize drag friction, but laser drilling has drawbacks and limitations. The present invention is intended to overcome or mitigate such drawbacks or limitations with laser drilling and other drilling methods.